You would still have the same age, gender, personality, skin color, etc. and you would be able to speak at least one local language and would know basic information of the era and place. Your family, social standing, and such would be randomly picked.
11:59:59 December 31st 1949. Fuck the olden times.
Dec 31st 1949.
I’m a queer woman, so these sort of time travel questions boil down to preserving as many rights as I can.
as a queer brown man; i don’t want to be anywhere at all.
why 1949 and where?
You would have been just fine in, say, North or East Africa a few hundred years ago.
I think they picked 49 because it’s as modern as they could get within OP’s parameters.
Where, the U.S.? Seems like there’s gotta be other times and places that were more woman- and queer-friendly, right?
You’d think places like San Francisco would be better, but 20 years later the Stone Wall riots happened. It was pretty rough all around to be gay in that time, though I’m sure some places were worse than others.
fwiw: gay nightlife in san francisco was at its zenith in the 50’s & 60’s .
the san francisco we have today is a tiny dim more conservative ember of what it was back then.
What is the significance of that date?
Its as close as possible to now before the 50s
Fair enough, though at that point you’d probably get better results if you went further back. The 50s were…really bad.
To be entirely fair I’d probably just ⚡ 🧑🏿🦱 ⚡ myself either way. Not willing to try and survive without my meds.
I think you would’ve been fine in the Roman empire during the Pax Romana.
Rome would kinda suck for a woman, especially a queer one.
New Zealand 800 years ago. The rest of the question doesn’t matter because there were no other humans there.
I pick NZ, 801 years ago
Are you and @bstix forgetting that there were giant eagles that probably ate humans?
There are now no humans there 799 years ago.
In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.
And people ask why Gandalf didn’t call em up to fly to mount doom.
Oh you mean the ones that went extinct not longer after meeting us?
@Deceptichum pretty sure that was because humans ate the eagles’ main food source, the giant moa, to extinction.
I don’t think you
twothree citizens of the fediverse are going to single-handedly defeat them.Edit: forgot @Nepenthe is now arriving before you.
As I’m from NZ atm I would choose here about 800 years ago as well - 800 years ago is about when the first Maori arrived - give or take a few
The location, geography and placement is randomly picked?
Then like the other guy said December 31, 1949 11:59 pm
To be born before this time randomly anywhere in the world means that there is a high chance you’d be dropped into an impoverished hell hole with nothing, no chance and no help … God help you if you are female.
I have a whole rant on this topic, but the short version:
It’s dentists.
The gnarliest mountain man, who hunts bears with his bear hands, can be brought to his knees with a toothache. The toothache never sleeps, can’t be fought, and always eventually wins. Even basic dentistry is life saving - even another human with a pair of pliers and some moonshine - but I’d much rather have novocaine.
Dental problems a hundred years ago were not as problematic as we think. I’m Indigenous Canadian and my parents were born and raised in the bush and judging from family photos I’ve seen from a hundred years ago … most people had decent teeth. I have photos of my grandmothers parents who must have been in the 60s or 70s and they all had full teeth, probably not the best but they had obvious white teeth.
Cavities and tooth problems are a modern problem from wealth … we eat too much starch and sugar and generally just eat way too much of everything. Before the modern era, up to about the mid 1800s, the average person ate about five pounds of refined sugar a year - today the average person consumes about 100 lbs of sugar a year. … and those are the averages! Back a hundred years ago, you were wealthy if you could get sugar … most people just couldn’t afford to eat it … most people couldn’t afford to eat! And they ate more simple diets and less often.
The biggest fear I have about going back to the past is just getting a flesh wound, a hang nail or a scratch that could fester into an infection and either take a limb or kill me.
Dental problems aren’t about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren’t the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.
You can pick the place too.
Just kill me
1600 India. I’m royalty and get to meet my ancestor and favorite historical figure Akbar. And yes the mughal empire is my roman empire
Social standing is random though based on OP’s rules. It would be terrible to end up as part of the lowest caste.
Given that there were 2 world wars in the early 1900s and that I like tech in general I would also choose 12/31/1949. At least I might have a PC sometime in my lifetime and I’d probably live to use it and not be a corpse on some beach somewhere.
Just pick Switzerland.
Have fun in 'Nam!
Yeah, I was thinking after I posted this what other wars I might get drafted into.
Yikes. Uhh. 1950. Cause you’re really pushing your luck before that if your background is random.
I mean, tune it just right and you can get the Industrial Revolution started a couple millenia early and maybe bypass the whole colonialism nonsense. Middle ages is too late, too much theocracy. Common knowledge gets you in grecorroman spaces, but maybe you can overshoot a touch and get some nice Phoenician traders to bankroll your plan to mass produce bycicles or Ikea-style furniture and ship it all over the Mediterranean.
Just… hope you stay healthy or that the rules let you pack a bunch of antibiotics. Or maybe learn a bunch of modern medicine before you go. Maybe prioritize the whole “discovering penicillin” thing when you get there.
Problem with that plan is you don’t know if you will be a slave.
Not necessarily insurmountable, but still a good point.
You may still have an easier time getting things up and running as a slave in antiquity than as a serf in the Middle Ages, depending on where you end up. Pretty sure you’d have a better shot as a slave in antiquity than in the US or other colonial areas, both because colonialism reeeeally sucked and because you’d have relatively more valuable skills.
@MudMan I think the odds are much better if you’re a non-chattel kind of slave, for sure.
Don’t get me wrong, you could also just materialize chained up to the bottom of a mine or in the middle of a war campaign lasting 40% of your lifespan and die in a week.
It’s just since the premise doesn’t say you get to refuse at least this way you’d have a good chance at just absolutely smashing it and maybe bypassing some of the real nasty stuff on the way to technological advancement.
@MudMan totally. Nowhere’s completely safe. This kind of thought experiment is always going to be a numbers game.
1940, as there are crazy things that will be going on in the world of computer science (and science in general) over the course of the next few decades and that would be really cool to experience. Kind of sad though to not be alive once we achieve human-level artificial intelligence, would be interested in seeing how that will turn out. I would probably chose America, as I wouldn’t want to spend WW2 in Germany where I live in the present.
Alternatively I think I would very much enjoy visiting Ancient Greek, although I’m not too sure when would be the best time for that; maybe at the peak of Athen.
You didn’t specify the calendar used 🤓, so I’ll go to the year 1401 in the hijri calendar (1980 in the gregorian calendar)
Why not 1949 in the hijri calendar???
1870s in the Southeastern United States. I’m gonna make goddamn sure Reconstruction doesn’t just end and Jim Crow functionally re-invents slavery.
'49?
Back in time if you’re gay? Or trans? Or a woman? Or a person of color?
No thanks.
Gay? Ancient Greece. Person of color? Just pick someplace that won’t have significant contact with different races during your lifetime.
If you go further back in time you can get back to fairly queer friendly societies
The way your society currently discriminates and segments humans is not universal
Right?
We’re going on a tangent here, but I feel like Western progressives, particularly with anglo backgrounds, tend to think the entire world runs by their parameters and always has. There is nothing intrinsic to the current kinds of bigotry in their societies. It’s pretty arbitrary and specific, in fact.
@MudMan yeah this. Threads like this make me really wish more non-western ancient history was taught in schools.
As an American, I wholeheartedly agree. I often wish I had a sturdier foundation in world history.
Oct 1945 to 1949.
